Independence Day

We spent Inde­pen­dence Day vis­it­ing fam­i­ly friends. Pre­vi­ous­ly, when we lived in Cave Creek, this friends’ house was next to the chil­dren’s apart­ment, and they often saw each oth­er and were very good friends. Now we meet less fre­quent­ly. At one of our meet­ings, we decid­ed to at least vis­it each oth­er once a month, alter­nat­ing between our homes. For Inde­pen­dence Day, they invit­ed us over.

I enjoy vis­it­ing them. They have a large yard with grass, mak­ing it eas­i­er to cope with the heat. The day was hot, 40 – 42 degrees. We rarely go out­side in such heat, but they always set up a huge pool in the sum­mer, where the kids hap­pi­ly play. We also regret­ted not bring­ing our swim­suits, but we man­aged to play bad­minton on the grass instead. In the neigh­bor­ing yard, there’s a huge mesquite tree that casts shade over half of their yard, pro­vid­ing a place to hide from the sun.

Then the men grilled lamb in the yard on the bar­be­cue. In the evening, after din­ner, when it got dark, they start­ed launch­ing fire­works. I tried to take pho­tos, but they don’t cap­ture the beau­ty of the fire­works as it appears in real­i­ty. Last year, on Inde­pen­dence Day, we went to the park to watch the fire­works. It was very beau­ti­ful. A lot of peo­ple gath­ered in the park. We sat wher­ev­er we could, enjoy­ing the view and relax­ing. But there was just one prob­lem. All these peo­ple arrived by car since there is no pub­lic trans­porta­tion, and it took a long time to dis­perse after the fire­works. That’s why we don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoy large gath­er­ings with huge num­bers of peo­ple and cars.